I'm Talking to You
by Aoiika
Summary: "Uh usually she tells you about me. She gives you all the details about my appearance, my expressions, words and thoughts…I'd like to talk to you. Because I never get the chance to talk for myself, to tell my story. She does it for me. Merlin, this is so difficult to explain. I'm really no good at this. Maybe I should stop talking and let her take over again." Thank you JK Rowling.


Hey.

I'm Harry. Harry Potter. I guess you already know me…know my name. Everyone knows my name, right?

So yeah, uhm… Usually _she_ tells you about me. She gives you all the details about my appearance, my expressions, words and thoughts, about my friends, my school, my troubles…

You probably even know about my future. Merlin, I'd like to know what you know. Whether I will ever succeed in killing Voldemort, whether everyone will be saved, whether I will die…

Will I die? Do you know?

Never mind, don't tell me. I don't want to know _that_. What I do want to know _desperately_, is who else will die, or get hurt. With the things lying ahead of all of us, I can hardly expect for everyone to make it through alive and unscathed. Only a fool would hope for that.

But the idea that people around me might get killed, might get hurt… And not even knowing how many! I mean, will it be five, or ten, or half of them? More than half? _All_ of them?

I look at all my friends, all the ones I've come to consider as a family. Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Luna, Fred, George, Lupin, Tonks, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley…

I already had a few times where I thought I'd lose one of them. Last year, when Mr. Weasley was attacked by a snake in one of my dreams, by _me_. And when I, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville and Luna went to the ministry…

Oh God! I thought I'd brought them all to their deaths! And then the Order came to save us and I felt so relieved and then…

Then I _did_ bring Sirius, my godfather and my father's best friend, to _his_ death.

It was Bellatrix! That evil Lestrange woman! You should have heard her! Her laugh sounded like a deranged vampire. I swear I wanted to kill her. When I realised what she'd done, I ran after her and… well, I suppose _she_ already told you about it, so there's no point in hiding it.

I…I tried to cast an unforgivable on Bellatrix. Damn it, I wanted to torture her so much! Because she couldn't possibly comprehend what kind of pain she had just inflicted on me! She was just laughing hysterically, even when I tried to curse her she…

Sorry. I have to calm down.

Speaking to you directly, without _her_ intervention is really…harder than I'd anticipated. I…don't know the right words to express myself. _She _knows many words, and she can play with them and make them form a wonderful story. She made you like it, didn't she? She made you love my reality. She made you want to be a part of it.

But I can't do that. I'm not like her. I don't know the words! And it's so frustrating! I'm trying, I _swear_ but… I'm Harry Potter, and everyone expects something spectacular to come from my mouth. But I'm not like that. Do they even realise that I'm a human being? Do they understand that I'm just as stupid and foolish as anyone else? Just as afraid?

Yes, I'm afraid.

Wait, let me try to tell you this in a way that _she_ would say it:

I'm more than afraid. Afraid is when I'm playing Quidditch and I'm soaring so high in the sky that even the players flying around the pitch look like tiny flecks of colour, and when I make a bold move and feel myself slipping off my broom. My heart stops for a moment as my body thinks it will fall into the void. That's fear.

What I feel now, that's _terror_. I'm terrified of having to come face to face with Voldemort again, to battle the most talented student at Hogwarts who turned into the most powerful dark wizard of all time. I'm terrified of what he can do, of the kind of magic he can control. I was sitting in the first row to witness some of his darkest accomplishments. And I know about Horcruxes. I discussed them with Dumbledore during our lessons.

And most of all I'm in agony at the thought of losing _anyone_. I simply want to stop time. If it's just to let more people die, I don't' want to go on with this anymore. I…don't want to let them die, to let them down. Will they die? Will they? And who?

People say that to be brave, you need to conquer your fear. I'm in Godric Gryffindor's house, supposedly the house of the brave, and the wizarding world calls me a hero, the chosen one. But I'm not brave at all! That fear, I can't control it. It's always there, it's constantly eating me up inside. I can just barely hide it from everyone else. Because you can imagine what would happen if people knew that even the chosen one, the one who's supposed to be their saviour, is terrified of the task ahead of him. That he's not confident at all, that he thinks he will lose, will die…

I'm so sorry. I'm really not the chosen one. I'm not a saviour. I'm barely _anything_! And you have to understand that! Because everyone already believes this charade, however it came to be, and you are the only one I can talk to about this!

And still, despite this misunderstanding about me being the only one who can defeat Lord Voldemort, there doesn't seem to be anyone else to do it. I really don't think I'm the one destined for the job, and I don't think I'm capable. But who else will do it? And everyone expects me to do it anyway. It's…easier to just play along.

They seem to know better who I am anyway. Because although I know I'm not the chosen one, I don't know who I am, or what. If I'm not _the_ Harry Potter, what's left? What's really me, and what's the part that I became because of who _you_ think I am?

I'd like to talk to you. Because I never get the chance to talk for myself, to tell my story. _She_ does it for me. But you don't know her very well, do you?

I mean, you know me, and my friends. You know what we like and dislike, what kind of humour we like, the people we hate and love, the way we think, the things we'll most likely say and all of that stuff. But you don't know the same about _her_. She's hidden.

I know her though. We're close.

I'm proud of it, because if _you_ have the right to know more about me than I do, than I at least should have more knowledge than you in some other aspect. That's only fair.

And it's only fair that you tell me what will happen to my friends. Because even if I don't die, even if by some miracle produced by _her_ words I survive Voldemort, I can't imagine a life without them.

Take Hermione for example. You _know_ how bright she is, and loyal. Agreed, she has her downsides. You don't have to live with them, but I do, so I _know_. But she's incredible. Whatever trouble I get into, and even if I go all the way to ministry for magic in the middle of the night to take on the Dark Lord himself, she'll always follow me.

I don't want her to. I want her to be safe! I want her to still be there when I…if I come back. I can't imagine having to…you know…lowering her into a grave and… no. I can't bear that thought.

And really, with Hermione goes Ron. Who are we kidding? They're as much a pair as Fred and George. They can't get separated. It would be too _cruel_! The idea of them being apart feels like the pinnacle of loneliness.

The 'pinnacle'. That's the kind of extensive vernacular _she_ would use. Am I doing it right?

Probably not. Like I said, I'm nothing like her. Or not very much in any case. Like I said, we're close, so we're not _completely_ different…

I don't want to lose Ron. When I remember that first time at King's Cross, seeing the Weasleys as I searched for that bloody platform nine and three quarters, and then meeting Ron on the train and just…having fun, laughing, eating candy as he told me about the wizarding world.

He was my first _friend_. I wish you could have been there, could have felt how wonderful a feeling it was.

Oh, sorry. You _were_ there. _She_ told you about that time on the train? Did you feel what I'm describing? Were you aware that at that point, I was so unimaginably happy that I thought my life would be perfect from then on? Or at least much better.

I'm not pulling your leg. I really thought from then on my happiness would always rise, life would always get better. Because how could it ever get worse than my life before then? And the wizarding world looked so enchanting, new and perfect, so like _home_, but so alien at once.

You know, I didn't even really know Voldemort back then. He was just a vague figure in my head who had replaced the car accident as the cause of my parents' deaths. And Death Eaters? I had no _clue_ what kind of people they were, what kinds of disgusting and morbid things they did.

Hey, you probably thought about your first day at Hogwarts too, no? _She_ made you curious about which house you'd fit in, didn't she?

You know, the moment when you get up on that stool, and McGonagall sets the Sorting Hat upon your head, the entire hall vanishes. All the staring upperclassmen and Professors are gone. All turns dark, and you're alone with the voice of the Sorting Hat vibrating as if from inside your head. And the smell of the leather of the hat… It's a smell every Hogwarts student only gets to smell _once_ in his or her lifetime, but one none of us ever forgets.

After hearing all the bad things about Slytherin from Hagrid and Ron, I was really afraid (the simpler kind of fear that I described earlier) to be sorted into the green and silver house.

I'm really happy I didn't. Imagine, being in the same house, in the same _dormitory_ as that filthy Death Eater Draco Malfoy.

You know, Hermione, Ron, and even Dumbledore may say all they want about it being unlikely that Voldemort would recruit a sixteen-year old, I am absolutely _certain_ that Malfoy is up to something. His visit to Borgin and Burkes at the beginning of the year was clear evidence for me, especially when linked together with the incident in Hogsmeade with that opal necklace.

Speaking of which, Katie still hasn't returned from St Mungo's. Is she going to become the next victim…after Sirius?

I hate that you know, and I don't. It feels like everything has been decided and whatever I do, I can't change anything. Lots of people, wizards, witches, muggles and children will die, and I _can't save them!_

I've already talked about how I feel that I'm defined by what others expect of me.

And don't get me wrong, I _want_ to do the right thing, even though the terror in me never fades, I _want_ to fight every Death Eater, reach for every damned Horcrux and blast Voldemort into the dark abysses of history books. But simply because people assume it is my role to do just that, I feel like it isn't my decision anymore.

It's like when Ron gets angry because Mrs. Wealsey tells him to clean up his room _just_ when he's about to do it from his own volition. He told me it gets to him the most because the moment that he wants to do something for himself and is proud to do it, his mother jumps in and makes him feel like it was _her_ decision, and that he is forced to do it, instead of exercising his free will.

It's the same with me. It's not that I wouldn't do it if people didn't want me to do it, but because they do, I feel like a lesser human.

Merlin, this is so difficult to explain. I'm really no good at this. Maybe I should stop talking and let _her_ take over again.

But it's just because I have the feeling that others control who I am, and how I act, that I want to speak to you myself! I want you to hear _me_, the way I really am. I want to take responsibility for myself and my own actions. I want to do my thing, and not what everyone else is doing.

But it's _scary_. Not as scary as the thought of facing Voldemort, and losing more people I care about, but still very frightening. Imagine…a well-lit road. It's very busy, there's lots of people and cars and shops and such. It's clear when you look at it that everyone is having fun, everyone is safe. The road is safe.

And then in the opposite direction there's a much smaller road with not a single soul in sight. And it's so dark that you can only see a few metres ahead. So, then…if you don't see it, and if you don't see anyone who's alive, who might have already walked the road and survived it, thereby proving its safety…how do you _know_ it's safe?

You don't. You simply don't.

That's just horrifying. And lonely. But still, it's what I want. And it's also what I have to do.

I want to do what I have to do, but in a way that is clear that it's _me_, Harry, James and Lily's son, who is doing it, and not the boy with whatever title they gave me in the wizarding press that everyone pictures when they read about me.

Are you still following? Are you still reading? Should I go?

No! I shouldn't even ask that question. You know, you're just like everyone else. You're someone who has read about me and consequently, you think you know 'Harry'. And you're all crushing me and pressing me into this tight, 'appropriate' little dress robe. But that's just who I must fight against.

I must fight against you, to make myself clear. And I'm going to do that by talking to you like I have done until now. So you can't tell me to go away. I know that you prefer _her_ over me. Remember that _I_ am the one who knows her best, so I get that you like her, love her, whatever you choose to call it. But I'm here now. I was born, and now I am alive, and that means I _am_ me.

It makes sense. It may not seem like it to you, but trust me it makes sense.

Thank you J.K. Rowling, for bringing this wonderful world into our minds, hearts, and lives.

Aoiika


End file.
